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#3869 -
Monday, April 19, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
I have stilled my restless mind, and
my heart is
radiant: for in That-ness I have seen beyond
That-ness, in company I have seen the Comrade
Himself.
Living in bondage, I have set myself free: I have
broken away from the clutch of all narrowness.
Kabir says: "I have attained the unattainable,
and my heart is coloured with the colour of love."
- Kabir
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"Songs of Kabir"
Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1977
posted to Along The Way
If you want money more than
anything,
you'll be bought and sold.
If you have a greed for food,
you'll be a loaf of bread.
This is a subtle truth:
whatever you love, you are.
- Rumi
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Version by Coleman Barks
"Birdsong"
Maypop, 1993 posted to Along The
Way
The Importance of Pure Motivation
What the dharma brings us, what it teaches us, very essentially, is to be pure, authentic, and natural. The first and most important thing is pure motivation. There’s a famous story about a hermit long ago in Tibet called Geshe Ben. He was in retreat, and one day he heard that his sponsors, who were financing his retreat, were coming to visit him. So he cleaned his room, arranged the shrine very neatly, set out all the offerings perfectly, and then sat and waited for his sponsors to arrive. Suddenly, just before they arrived, he reflected on his motivation and said to himself, “What am I doing? This is all fake. I’m just hoping to create a good impression, that’s all!” He snatched a handful of ash from the stove by his side and flung it all over the shrine and the offerings. A great master called Padampa Sangye who heard about this called it “the greatest offering in the whole of Tibet.”
- Sogyal Rinpoche
Life's Not Black and White
Buddhism encourages us to be wary of antithetical concepts, not only good and evil, but success and failure, rich and poor, even the duality between enlightenment and delusion. We distinguish between the opposing terms because we want one rather than the other, yet the meaning of each depends upon the other. That may sound abstract, but such dualities are actually quite troublesome for us. If, for example, it is important to live a pure life (however I understand purity), then I need to be preoccupied with avoiding impurity. If wealth is important for me, then I am also worried about avoiding poverty. We cannot take one lens without the other, and such pairs of spectacles filter our experience of the world.
- David Loy
The Truth of Nonduality
Money coming or going, harmony, wisdom, and health can all turn upon a single thought. With a single thought, poverty can be overcome; with a single thought, disease can be cured; with a single thought, you can embrace and help others. Because mind is infinite, it can embrace the universe and still have room left over. Thus, if you understand the truth of nonduality, you can completely embrace everything. If you raise one thought that is calm, noble, and humble, and do so without any trace of like or dislike, or of “I,” then that thought begins to manifest in the world and becomes medicine for all suffering. All energy will follow and work together with this kind of thought.
- Daehaeng Kun Sunim
"We live in illusion and the appearance
of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you
understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing,
you are everything. That is all.”
- Kalu Rinpoche posted by
Bob O'Hearn
BRIEFLY IT ENTERS,
AND BRIEFLY SPEAKS
I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .
I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . .
When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .
I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . .
I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .
I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .
I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . .
I am the heart contracted by joy. . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . .
I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow. . . .
I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .
I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name. . . .
- Jane Kenyon
From The Boat of Quiet Hours posted by Tom McFerran
For Alan Larus photos with poems
http://www.ferryfee.com/Bluesky/Illiterate.htm